Ed Sutherland - page 91

Adobe is working with Apple to develop a version of Flash specifically for the iPhone, according to a report Monday. Adobe’s CEO said tailoring Flash for the touch-screen handset required Apple’s involvement.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen told Bloomberg while at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Although 80 percent of handsets use Flash, in 2008 Apple CEO Steve Jobs dismissed the standard and light versions of Flash and said Adobe needed another version for the iPhone.

A carrier announced Monday a deal to sell Apple’s iPhone in the United Arab Emirate and Saudi Arabia.

Emirates Telecommunications Corp. (ETC) said the iPhone 3G would be available in February, however other details were not disclosed. The deal would be Apple’s first iPhone 3G agreement in the UAE, according to Reuters.

Eithad Etisalet, a subsidiary of ETC, will offer the iPhone to cell phone users in Saudi Arabia.

Apple may translate Cold War tactics to the marketplace, using the threat to unload its “nuclear arsenal” in an attempt to derail Palm’s iPhone rival, a patent attorney told Bloomberg Monday.

If swords are unsheathed, the battle could leave both parties bloody and Apple’s image altered, according to the news report.

“The best deterrent of a nuclear arsenal is not to use it,” Morgan Chu, patent lawyer for Los Angeles, Calif.-based Irell & Manella told Bloomberg.

T-Mobile USA, the carrier that released the first Android-based cell phone, said it plans this year to introduce more smartphones using Google’s open-source handset platform.

Promising “more G series phones” in 2009, T-Mobile USA senior engineering vice president Neville Ray breathed new life into rumors of the G2, according to industry publication FierceWireless. The G2, created by HTC, reportedly could be released in April.

Unlike the G1 which T-Mobile released in mid-2008, the G2 would ditch a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for a virtual one similar to the iPhone. The phone could also carry a smaller price, making the handset attractive in the current tight economy, according to reports.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is increasingly appearing to be the place to be in 2010 for Apple vendors. The tradeshow announced the iLounge, an 18,000-square foot area for Apple gadget sellers.

A gauge of the swiftness of the shift from Macworld to CES could be seen in that the Apple-centric venue at CES initially was to be just 4,000-square feet.

“In fact, the original space allocated for the pavillion sold out in less that one week – a CES show record,” AFP quoted CEA vice president Karen Chupka.

Just days after Apple released updated iPhone firmware, some owners of the handset report problems connecting with iTunes.

The complaints, voiced on Apple’s online support message areas, revolve around reported trouble syncing their iPhone with Apple’s music store.

While many owners talked of problems with their iPhone syncing with iTunes, one writer reported having trouble adding a movie he purchased to his 160GB iPod.

Computer-maker Dell is considering entering the tight smartphone market, possibly offering a touchscreen alternative to the iPhone as soon as February, according to a Friday report.

Dell is mulling whether to use Windows Mobile or Google’s Android platform to power the handset, according to the Wall Street Journal. The device, which could compete with Apple’s iPhone or RIM’s BlackBerry would also featured a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

The report follows analyst talk earlier this month that a smartphone from the No. 2 computer-maker was “closer to reality.” In late 2008, accidentally released photos appeared to show two smartphones on Dell’s website. In October, the website briefly featured the Traveler 117 and Traveler 127 from Inventec.

If smartphones were judged on component pricing, Apple’s iPhone would best RIM’s BlackBerry Storm. The iPhone 3G costs $174 to make, versus $203 for the Storm offered from Verizon Wireless, according to a new report.

The data from iSuppli suggests carrier Verizon Wireless is greatly subsidizing the $200 touch-screen BlackBerry. AT&T, the exclusive U.S. AT&T has indicated subsidizing the iPhone 3G cost it $450 million in the fourth quarter.

The manufacturing cost difference appears to hinge on component choices, including transmission technology.

As Apple’s App Store grows and more publishers seek recognition, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is set to highlight ‘premium’ games priced at $19.99, reports said Thursday.

The action is viewed as yet more confirmation traditional game publishers see the Apps Store and the iPhone and iPod touch as new vehicles to reach customers.

Athough the move would allow big-name games to stand-out from the $0.99 apps, the move is being criticized for a form of red-lining. The new ‘premium’ games section would be limited to large publishers, such as Electronic Arts.

Apple faces another lawsuit over iPhone 3G performance. The latest, a class-action lawsuit filed in Northern California, asks a court to award more than $5 million to iPhone 3G buyers.

In the 14-page lawsuit, California resident Jason Medway alleges Apple knew the “iPhone 3G cannot maintain consistent service” and has only offered buyers replacement phones.

The legal action claims iPhone 3G purchasers “have experienced broken promises regarding the phone’s transmission speeds.”

AT&T, after using the iPhone to salvage its fourth-quarter revenue, is in talks with Apple to team up for a 3G data service aimed at MacBook owners, reports said Thursday.

At the heart of the speculation is a brief comment to Fortune by the carrier’s Emerging Devices group president Glenn Lurie. Lurie said he’s talked recently with interim Apple CEO Tim Cook.

“I would very much like to do more business with Apple, and I hope that we do,” Lurie said Wednesday. Although the AT&T executive said he was having similar conversations with other companies, Apple has been an especially profitable partner.

Apple has expanded the refurbished products offered at discounted prices from its online store. The Apple Store now includes newer iPods, as well as refurbished aluminum unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company now sells its latest 1GB iPod shuffle for $39. Available colors include silver, green, blue and pink.

The latest 8GB and 16GB iPod nano is being sold refurbished for $129 and $169, respectively.

AT&T Wednesday deemed Apple’s iPhone 3G a “success,” reporting adding 1.9 million of Apple’s smart phones before the end of 2008. The news comes as the exclusive U.S. iPhone carrier appears to have sold double the Blackberry handsets of rival Verizon Wireless.

The carrier said it had activated 4.3 million iPhone 3Gs since the handset’s launch.

Despite being a $450 million drag on AT&T earnings, the carrier announced new iPhone subscribers helped it post a 2.4 percent revenue increase for the quarter, reports said.

Mark Papermaster, the former IBM executive at the center of a legal battle, will begin work April 24 as Apple’s senior vice president of devices hardware engineering.

In an announcement, Apple said “the litigation between IBM and Mark Papermaster has been resolved.” The company said Papermaster would lead Apple’s iPhone and iPod development efforts.

Papermaster had sued his former employer after IBM had asked a court to halt him joining Apple. The technology company had argued the new employment would violated a prior agreement not to work for a rival.

Have Apple lawyers targeted Palm as a potential target for patent-infringment lawsuits? Concerns sent shares of the Palm Pre handset slipping Tuesday.

Palm shares were down $0.40 as of 1:22 p.m. Eastern. Apple’s stock was up $0.86.

Worries were renewed earlier today on word Apple had been granted a patent covering a “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics,” according to the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD.

Apple was granted a key patent covering many aspects of the iPhone interface as well as potentially other “multi-touch” handsets. CEO Steve Jobs was listed among the inventors in a 358-page filing awarded last week.

The patent covers the iPhone, gestures and the handset’s OS X operating software.

U.S. Patent No. 7479949 comes saber-rattling between Apple and other touch-screen handset makers. Last week, interim Apple CEO Tim Cook warned unnamed competitors that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company would protect its intellectual property.

Delays in shipping Apple’s new iMacs are due mostly to “business reasons,” Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu told clients Monday.

Chief among the reasons are decisions on which chip to use in the iMacs and the timing of Apple’s release of its upcoming Snow Leopard operating system.

“Apple is in the midst of figuring out whether to power the new iMac line with Intel quad-core processors or more high-powered dual-core processors with larger caches,” Wu wrote in his report.

In a technological tale of two cities, Microsoft reported quarterly sales of its Zune media player fell by 54 percent as demand for Apple’s dominant iPod rose by 3 percent.

The $100 million drop in Zune sales came amid word Friday Microsoft would lay off up to 5,000 employees.

A number of factors are part of the contrasting sales picture. “It’s the category, it’s the business, it’s the economy,” Zune marketing director Adam Sohn told Macworld.

The BlackBerry Storm, RIM’s first touch-screen handset, has gotten off to a rough start in its bid to compete with Apple’s iPhone, according to a report Monday.

The phone, plagued by technical problems, sold 500,000 units a month after RIM unveiled the device Nov. 21, according to the Wall Street Journal. By contrast, Apple sold 2.4 million iPhone 3Gs in its first quarter.

Jim Balsillie, RIM’s co-chief executive, said swatting bugs after a product hits the shelves is now the “new reality” as cell phone makers attempt to duplicate Apple’s success with the iPhone.

A new trojan horse variant has been found in pirated versions of Adobe’s latest version of the Photoshop suite, security researchers warned Monday. The trojan horse is considered a “serious” security risk, opening Macs to malicious takeover by remote users.

The Trojan horse, OSX.Trojan.iServices.B, is included in Photoshop CS4 cracking software distributed on file-sharing networks such as BiTorrent, according to security software developer Intego.

“The actual Photoshop installer is clean, but the Trojan horse is found in a crack application,” Intego announced in a statement.

Some iPod nano owners may being getting refunds after Apple agreed to pay $22 million to settle a class-action lawsuit, according to a report Friday.

Consumers who purchased the original nano introduced in 2005 could receive $25 as part of an agreement yet to be signed by the court, CNBC reports.

“Apple has agreed to provide a cash settlement of $22.5 million,” the Cupertino, Calif.-based company told nano owners this week. A $25 refund will be given to nano owners who purchased the digital music player without a “slip case,” designed to prevent the screens of early nanos from scratching.

Palm said Friday it won’t be threatened by Apple’s hint of lawsuit should rivals mimic too closely its best-selling iPhone. The maker of the new Pre smartphone did some trash talking of its own, bringing up “fundamental” handset patents it owns.

“If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves,” Palm spokewoman Lynn Fox told the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD.

Fox said Palm controls a “robust patent portfolio” that includes possibly vital aspects of cell phone design. Palm’s Treo handset is seen as breaking ground for Apple and other smartphone makers.

Apple has delayed shipment of some of its new unibody MacBooks by up to a more than a month after originally promised, according to a report Friday.

In one case, a 17-inch unibody MacBook Pro ordered earlier this week won’t ship from its Chinese plant until February 26th and may not reach the buyer until early March, a reader told Apple Insider.

In another instance, Apple has automatically upgraded shipping to overnight for MacBook buyers.

The makers of the Boxee media center are reportedly investigating whether to emded its television streaming software in a variety of hardware, including game consoles.

“During CES we were approached by several device makers that wanted to speak with us about embedding boxee into existing or future products,” Avner Ronen wrote Thursday at the company’s blog.

Choosing a hardware solution would avoid requiring consumers either stream video from a computer or modify an Apple TV, a process that could interfere with using the Apple device to stream Netflix videos to your television.

Although embedding Boxee software is not in the near future, Ronen offered a poll, asking customers what hardware (set-top box, TV tuner, blu-Ray DVD, etc.) they would prefer and at what price.

In 2008, Boxee fixed their software after an update to Apple TV disabled the media streaming service. Boxee has received $4 million in venture funding from CBS, Netflix, Hulu and others.